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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Lauren Collins, Executive Director of Church Flatbush Community Alliance
3:35:55
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Lauren Collins, Executive Director of the Church Flatbush Community Alliance, testified about the challenges faced by Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in implementing the new sanitation mandate. She emphasized the financial burden this unfunded mandate would place on small to medium-sized BIDs like hers, which already allocate a significant portion of their budget to sanitation efforts.
- The Church Flatbush Community Alliance spends 42% of its $589,000 budget on sanitation, covering 2.7 miles in Flatbush.
- Implementing the new container requirements would cost over $40,000 for just four bins, which the BID cannot afford.
- Collins called for DSNY to fund this initiative rather than forcing nonprofits and other organizations to bear the cost.
Lauren Collins
3:35:55
Hello.
3:35:55
Good afternoon, council council member.
3:35:58
My name is Lauren Collins.
3:36:00
I'm the executive director of the Church Flatbush Community Alliance, formerly the Church Avenue bid and the Flatbush Avenue bid.
3:36:07
We are a business improvement district.
3:36:09
I'm going away from my prepared notes because I was pretty inspired by a lot of what was said.
3:36:14
I was really happy to see the committee ask such careful questions about sanitation.
3:36:19
This this mandate, this unfunded mandate would cause such hardship for a lot of bids like mine.
3:36:26
We are a small to medium sized bid.
3:36:29
Our total budget is $589,000.
3:36:33
40 2 percent of that goes to sanitation.
3:36:35
We spent $255,000 on sanitation, which you'll find is very typical of a lot of the bids as far as percentage.
3:36:43
For that money, have a crew of three people plus ACE, I think one person from ACE usually, cleaning more than 2.7 miles in Flatbush.
3:36:51
Flatbush is not very clean.
3:36:53
There's a lot of trash to pick up.
3:36:55
We have about 55 bags a day of public litter plus about 35 bags on average that are just dumped there throughout the day illegally.
3:37:05
30% of bid staff time is also spent on sanitation monitoring and addressing issues.
3:37:11
We get we get funding from discretionary through council member Rita Joseph that entirely goes to staff time because of all the time we have to spend.
3:37:20
We did do clean curbs.
3:37:22
We have three containers through DSNY a few years ago.
3:37:26
We have three funded containers, great program.
3:37:29
We have to pay for maintenance.
3:37:30
We just spent $1,300 for one that was broken, but that is a fair way to have us use containers and to get bags off the To begin for us to begin to comply with this would cost us a little over $40,000 for just four bins.
3:37:46
We've already did a site visit with DSNY.
3:37:49
We do not have the money to pay for this, and I think you will hear that, I'm sure, when you see the submitted testimony from many of the bids.
3:37:56
The money just isn't there.
3:37:59
And as council member Nurs, I believe, said earlier, this is DSNY's initiative.
3:38:04
They should fund it and not force other organizations, nonprofits to do that.
3:38:08
Thank you so much.
Shaun Abreu
3:38:09
Thank you.